


Watching You Without Me

by Batwynn



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, Mystery, Nemeton, Nogitsune, Peter has kids, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, The Hale Pack - Freeform, hale pack feels, not all as it seems to be, questionable reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 15:44:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7851253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batwynn/pseuds/Batwynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles' world is ending, by his own hands, and the only thing left to do is strike a bargain with the trickster.</p><p>His life for everyone else's. </p><p>The only problem is, he wasn't specific enough.<br/>Now, he's trapped in a world where the Hale fire never happened, his mom never died, and Stiles Stilinski was never even born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watching You Without Me

**Author's Note:**

> ** This could probably use some editing, my apologies.

                                                           

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

If you think you’re safe, here’s a hint: You're not. 

 

It’s a hard lesson to learn, but Stiles has had plenty of practice with hard lessons taught under the illusion of good choices. All those little moments where Stiles maybe started to doubt his choices, but not enough to put a stop to them.

 

Like the coldest Stiles has ever been, dunked into the water with a gasp and a word on his lips. Possibly ’ _no_ ’. And it’s all confusing… Confusing symbolism, but thankfully his friends are with him. Allison seems more sure than he is that this is right, that this will save their parents. 

 

He loses something in there. Or something about him gets lost. He doesn't have time for self-analysis when shit is hitting the fan. 

 

Lies. She's lying to Derek—Stiles has to tell him. How to tell him what she did to his dad? He wants to know how to break it to him gently, so this isn’t the moment that finally breaks Derek Hale.

 

Terrifying images that plague him as he drives through the storm. He's all alone, imagining what horrible things he'll find when he gets there. If he gets there. 

 

He's bleeding. 

 

It's a baseball bat, but it works. Oh god, it works. They're fine, his dad is fine. 

 

He is not fine. 

 

Words stop being words.

 

Stiles stops being Stiles. 

 

Then, it's the hour of the _fox._ Time ticks by slowly for him as he watches, and waits for the right moment. The moment to say what he needs to say and finally become a player in this fucked-up game.

 

And horrible things happen that make him doubt his choice to wait, to hold out for that perfect moment. Things that make him doubt, and scream, and hold on, hold on, hold on.

 

The moment is now. 

 

Stiles takes a deep breath, and opens his mouth. 

 

 

                                                 

 

 

 

“-ILES!”

 

Derek jerks awake, the echo of a shout still on his lips. It’s too dark to get his bearings, and for a single, horrible moment he can still see those eyes reflected back at him in the shadows. Those sad, amber eyes, set in a sickly face and a thin body. Derek tries to focus on the face, but the dream is already slipping away from him as the first rays of sun break through the trees surrounding the house. 

 

He remembers calling a name, but it’s already lost in the fading mess of red, sharp teeth, and screams.

 

Scrubbing his hands over his face, Derek mutters, “Weird,” and reaches over to check his phone. It’s 6AM, which means he still has an hour before he needs to head out to pick up his father at the airport. He could still pass it off to his sister, but knowing Laura, he knows he can’t afford that favor. She’d make him do something painful and equally embarrassing to pay her back.   
  
After a few minutes of silent debate, Derek decides it’s pointless to try to sleep another hour, and he might as well make breakfast for everyone.

 

He’s already forgotten the nightmare by the time the eggs are done.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

He's aimlessly thinking about common misconceptions while he exists—or doesn't exist—in the dark nothingness of wherever he is. 

 

He's thinking about how people always say that the first breath hurts the most—the one you take the moment you break the surface. But, personally, Stiles finds the second one to be a lot more painful. 

 

Stiles wiggles around a little in the void, and frowns. He couldn't do that a minute ago, so what did that mean? 

 

Hmm. 

 

Well, at least there isn't any hell fire or whatever. 

 

Anyway, the first breath thing. Stiles figures it's one of those deep gasps that drag of air into your starving, empty lungs. It's a shock—a start—it's almost too quick for you to really process. Just. Gasp! Air! Breath out and—

 

Then there's the second one. 

 

The second one doesn't come with the shock, you're lungs have already gotten the sweet taste of air in them again, and they're scrambling to get more as fast as they can. They want to make up for every second you spent without oxygen; they want to work at 300% capacity, and they want it all _now_. Which is why Stiles thinks that the second breath hurts more, because your body is stupid and tries too hard, and does too much all at once, and your heart's out of control, and something's not right. The darkness is lifting, there shouldn't be anything solid under him, last he checked, and the weight on his chest is killing him all over again. Shit! He can't—He needs to—

 

_Breathe In._

 

One.

 

_Breathinginnumbertwo_ —holy crap he was wrong they both hurt. It's both. All. Everything hurts.

 

Which is funny—not in the 'ha ha' way—because he's not supposed to feel anything at this point. He's supposed to be gone somewhere. Wherever you go when you die and you're not that nice of a person.

 

Stiles is definitely breathing, though, and apparently alive... just not 100% sure why or how that happened. Stiles is pretty sure he 'not here' for a little while there, so why he's clearly looking up at green things is a bit of a conundrum. 

Also, he remembers the exact moment he chose to make a deal with the asshole fox spirit to save all his friends. The kind of deal that has 'staying dead' somewhere in the fine print, and 'no one else dies' in bold, underlined, dramatic Comic Sans. 

 

Which is, you know, what some might call it a stunning example of self-sacrifice and love. Others, like Derek-probably, would call him stupid and are probably really mad at him right now. Stiles chooses to label himself somewhere in between, because it _was_ kind of stupid, but he also saved everyone he loves so they can be mad all they want. They're alive to be angry, and that's kind of the point. 

 

Stiles narrows his eyes at the blurry fuzz of leaves above his head. This is... Obviously real. He can feel a stick stabbing him in the back, and quite possibly a bug crawling on his hand. Gross. 

 

Ugh, Right. So, he's not dead. 

 

Which means the bold, underlined, _really important_ part of the contract is probably void now. But, as far as he knows, he also has his own body back. Which means someone else did something stupid and holy shit, Stiles is going to punch Scott in the face so hard it'll pop his jaw back in line. It was obviously Scott. It's always Scott fucking up his carefully laid out plans with bravery and sometimes really stupid moves that somehow usually work. 

 

Speaking of idiots, where is everybody? 

 

He can't feel anyone near by, which makes no sense at all. That's what his tattoos were made for, to know where his pack is. Unless they got zapped when he died, that's a possibility. Nothing in his body feels 'normal', not since he got possessed. It's been nearly impossible to detect anomalies when everything's been feeling off since they went for a icy-cold dip to go look at a tree stump with their minds. He probably should have talked it over with Deaton before getting the tattoos, or getting in the icy water, or both. Now that he's thinking about it, secret magical tattoos seems like a really dumb idea, especially when Deaton has specifically and obviously been ignoring his questions about the whole Spark thing for some time now.

 

Which is kind of why he got help somewhere else and—wa-la! Magical secret tattoos that might have slightly contributed to his possession. Great, Stiles isn't looking forward to holding on to that guilt for, oh, _the rest of his life._

 

Stiles realizes—a little late—that he's been laying around on the ground for at least twenty minutes grumbling to himself, that there's no one around for miles, and that he should probably get up and figure this out before something else goes wrong. 

 

_Wronger. The wrongest. The wrongy-est. Thank god no one in the pack can read minds._

 

Stiles stands up with absolutely no problem, so he hopes that means he's only been dead for maybe a minute, not like some 'new body' bullshit. It feels like his wonderfully messed up body. His arms are—holy shit, where did all his arm hair go? 

 

Stiles runs his hands over his weirdly hairless arms, frowning at the strange sort of warmth seeping from his tattoos. Did something else happen? Did his arm hair literally get burned off? He could almost hide the damn things under that stuff before, it was that long. 

 

He continues stupidly petting his smooth arms for a long moment before he thinks to pat himself down. Everything seems the same, down to the clothes He was wearing when they made the deal, a pen-light tucked into his jeans pocket, and the hole in the heel of his left sock. 

 

"Spooky," he mutters, checking his hoodie's pockets for anything new and interesting. Keys, thank god, and Gum. An ancient stick of fruity Zebra gum that Stiles hopes he left in there at some point, instead of the fox demon having a penchant for temporary surfing zebra tattoos. That's just creepy-wrong, which is saying something considering the physiological torture Stiles has been through in the past few weeks.  

 

Anyway, keys, a light, and a stick of gum. Fantastic. Now all Stiles has to do is figure out where he is, find everyone else, figure out _why_ he's back here instead of being dead, and hopefully maybe not die again? That would be nice. 

 

Stiles casts a quick look around him, confirming that those are, indeed, trees. Which means this is probably the Preserve, and probably not too far away from where he remembers the Nogitsune taking them when Stiles proposed his deal. He was lurking just under the surface for the entire walk out here, angry enough to make his body's hands shake, but too weak to take over control again. Which is why the deal was his only option, and why he really needs to find everyone because him being here can't mean anything good. 

 

"Right, so, trees means preserve..." 

 

Okay, brain is slow on the uptake right now. Where to next? Does he hoof it to the loft? Maybe Scott's place? But they might not even be home and his dad—

 

"Home," he blurts out, quickly shoving a hand back into his pockets to fish out that pen light, and turn it on. He has no idea what's going on, or how to even get home from here, but his dad is kind of the first person he wants to see after waking up again. 

 

So, picking a direction and silently praying it at least leads to a road, Stiles takes a deep breath and sets off through the silent forest towards home. 

 

        

* * *

 

 

It's a miracle that he doesn't kill himself tripping over a root, and another miracle that he finds a random back yard flush along the woods only twenty minutes later. From there, it's not hard to navigate the next two blocks to his street, with only one furry interruption in the form of a small, annoying dog Stiles has never seen before. Maybe because he's usually with Scott and Scott is scary alpha-dog? Hah, _scary_. 

 

Home is dark, and silent. In fact, most of the street is dark without the usual televisions blaring some late night re-run of 'Everybody Loves Raymond', and nobody staying up late to study while secretly procrastinating on Tumblr. The silence after the yipping dies down is downright disturbing, but it's not as weird as the sheriff's truck in the driveway, parked next to a daisy-yellow boat of a car. He has _no_ idea who's car that is, but it's not supposed to be there. Also, the horribly vivid yellow that seems to glow in the dark is weirdly familiar. Speaking of night... It has to be at least eleven by now, so who the hell is in his house this late at night? 

 

Grumbling, Stiles pulls out his keys and navigates his way up the front steps without touching Creaky Board A or B. He's totally ready to do his best creeping inside, and hopefully find his phone somewhere in his room so he can check in with Scott and everyone.  It feels wrong that everything is so calm and quiet after, well, sacrificing himself in the middle of explosions and murder? So, yeah, he'll feel a lot better when he's inside his room. With his Cell phone. Pronto. 

 

The problem is: his key isn't working in the lock. 

 

Stiles gives it a little shake; sometimes the summer heat makes it stick. 

 

"What the...?" He trails off, squinting through the shitty gloom of the streetlights. The stupid key isn't turning at all, and now that he's gotten a good look at it, the door isn't even the right color. It's red—since when was it red? His dad painted it blue after his mom died, said he couldn't keep looking at the red because it—

 

The handle rattles as someone unlocks it from the inside, and opens the door. 

 

"Can I help you?" His father grunts, looking Stiles over suspiciously. Which strikes him as odd, but it's not like he had a chance to tell his dad that he was going to go kill himself so the fox demon would stop killing. He's probably just pissed because it's so late and Stiles might not be a freshman anymore, but there's still a curfew." 

 

"Ha ha, you're hilarious," Stiles sighs, waving his keys at his dad. "This is way too elaborate for a joke, dad. It's not even April anymore." 

 

Something in his father's face goes... Weird. His entire posture changes, from half-asleep confused to wary sheriff in the blink of an eye. It's not like Stiles hasn't seen that look before, just not directed at him, never at him. 

 

"Do you need some help, kid?" He asks, and yeah, that's definitely his Officer Of The Law voice. "Can I call anybody for you?" 

 

Stiles' jaw drops. "Wha? Why are you...? This isn't funny!" 

 

"I think you're a little confused, son..." He shifts a little, and his face changes again. "How 'bout you tell me your name?" 

 

It's the fake smile—holy shit, his dad is _good copping_ him. He's doing that friendly face thing that used to creep him out when Stiles saw his dad do it to the slightly crazier suspects who needed to be treated a little more carefully. Stiles has to swallow down the rise of bile in his throat, because this is so _wrong_. This is so fundamentally wrong. He's asking for his goddamn _name_. 

 

"It's—dad, it's _me_ ," he sputters, "you know me. Why are you—"

 

"John?" Someone calls out. "What's going on?" 

 

 

 

Stiles goes cold. 

 

 

 

People say you get this feeling down your spine—in your gut—when someone walks over your grave. Stiles used to scoff at the expression, since, of course, living people didn't have graves so what the fuck? But now, he thinks he might know what they mean. 

 

It's more like someone dug you a grave when you weren't paying attention, like you knew they were doing _something_ , so you're kind of got that creepy feeling going already and then—wham! They push you in and start shoveling the dirt over you. 

 

That's the closest description of what it feels like when his mom's face appears in the doorway, sleepy and half-smiling in polite confusion at the gaping boy on the doorstep. 

 

That dark, cold pit is gobbling him up. Dirt is piling in on top of him—he's suffocating and she's standing there looking worried. 

 

His _mom_. Is here. 

 

She's wearing yellow daisy pajama pants, the same pair Stiles remembers packing up for her when she moved to the hospital during her last few months. The same pair his father carefully folded up in a box, and tucked away in the attic. Months after she died. 

 

His mom. 

 

Stiles bends over, and throws up all over their cheerful welcome mat—he reads the cheerful 'Stay-A-While' message during his second wave. 

 

He catches movement out of the corner of his eye—she's reaching for him in concern—but he scrambles away before those hands can touch him. He can't deal with those—He can't say anything else, not to them. They don't know him, she's not—she's—he can't do this. He can't. 

 

He _can't_. 

 

She's dead.

 

_Actually, you're dead, remember?_ a voice reminds him. Which, uh, true, but that doesn’t make the fact that she’s supposed to be too. 

 

Stiles swallows the nasty taste in his mouth, and starts backing down the steps. He's officially the stupidest genius in the world, his dad was right. His dad is—fuck, he doesn't _know him anymore._ His dad's staring at him as he stumbles away from them, face crunched in horror and probably disgust at the nice present Stiles just left on their door step. They're saying something he can't hear over the roar of blood in his ears. It doesn't matter, he doesn't know these people. He shouldn't know them. 

 

It's just noise to him.

 

He whimpers when he passes the yellow car, because it all makes horrible sense now. His mom always loved yellow. _Loves_ yellow. Why is she still alive? How does his existence, or lack thereof change that? Is his being alive what killed her? Is his death somehow what keeps her alive? Is she happy? Are they happier without him?

 

 He threw up on their happy welcome mat and Stiles has to stop thinking about the expression on her face. Surprise, concern, shock. Nothing of his mother, there's no familiarity in her eyes. Oh god, he's going to go insane if he can't focus on something else. 

 

_Focus, Stiles. Breathe—alright, wheeze, whatever—breathe out. Sound terrible. Good enough. Now focus._

 

He needs somewhere safe, just for a while. Somewhere he can hole up in and think. Planning—he's supposed to be good at plans, he's supposed to have considered every possibility, every outcome. 

 

Oh fuck, he really didn't think this dying thing through. He thought it was going to be easy, just die and everyone else can live. Not too hard. Sure, his dad would be devastated, but Stiles has set up a million different plans to keep his dad healthy and happy when he's gone. That's probably morbid thinking, but Stiles plans for this shit for a reason. Like, when evil demon-things appear and offer deals that save the day with a little side of self-sacrifice. He's just lucky he beat Derek to the punch. Or unlucky, because holy shit he's nothing to everyone now and his mom's _alive_ because of that and he has no idea where to go or what to do or who he even is anymore. If he's not Stilinski, who is he? How is he here? What is he—

 

No, wait, okay. He's okay. He just needs somewhere safe. 

 

 

Stiles groans, and smashes his head with a fist, trying to shake thoughts loose. It's a mess in there right now, he just needs... To think. 

 

Safe. Safe. Safe.

 

Stiles blinks, and let's out a wheeze of a laugh. He's obviously  been over-thinking this, because the obvious choice is so obvious. 

 

And probably the safest place in town. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Scott's house is dark, which isn't a surprise. It's also lacking all the charms and runes Stiles and Deaton set up for them last year, which freaks him out for a good two minutes before he remembers that _he doesn't exist_ here, so... no runes, no magic protection for his best friend, no best friend at all. 

 

Which is all the proof he wasn’t looking for that this is some kind of different timeline or something, because even if his mother has somehow been brought to life and forgotten about Stiles, no matter what version of him exists, there’s no way he wouldn’t protect Scott. 

 

Anyway, Scott seems to be safe and sound in there with no runes, which means he's probably still human. Because with no Stiles to interfere with his life, there's no dead body, no Peter-fucking-Hale bite. No werewolf friends. No pack. No _constant_ _danger_. 

 

Which is a pretty depressing thought. Scott ends up being just another life ruined by Stiles Stilinski’s existence. Wow, he's on a roll now. Who else is he going to find alive because he’s not here? 

 

Whatever. He’s not thinking about it anymore.

 

He's also not going to burst into Scott's life like this, not if he's safe and free from the wolf-drama in this universe timeline thing. Stiles can’t do that to him again, and there’s also the fact that Scott is maybe also a little bit useless with supernatural stuff right now. Which is probably an awful thing to think, but it’s true.

 

Stiles salutes the darkened window, whispers, "Sleep well, buddy," and starts walking… just walking. Scott was his last hope—and if that makes him break out in slight crazy-sounding giggles because Scott’s never even seen Star Wars and it’s _not even funny_ , no one’s here to judge him.

 

* * *

 

 

 

The way the sky lights up before the sun even rises is probably one of the most beautiful things Stiles has ever seen. Sure, once upon a time he might have said that Lydia is above morning light on his list of beautiful things in the world, but so much has changed over the years that he doesn’t think twice about dismissing her from his thoughts. It's not that she's not beautiful anymore, it's more that she's a beautiful _person_ to him now, rather than an unrealistic ideal.

 

The thought that he's gone back to being nothing to such an amazing person makes him sort of give up on holding back the tears that have been wanting to get out since his mom appeared. But, it’s not even Lydia he’s crying about, it's everyone. The entire pack. All his friends, his father, his town.

 

It's a lot of people to lose in one day. 

 

 

He's halfway through the woods before he realizes it's _him_ making those weird whimpering-sobbing noises, which makes him stop and take a few breaths before wiping his eyes and—gross—blowing his nose on his sleeve. Taking a quick glance around him, Stiles is surprised to find he’s been stumbling along one of the smaller paths towards the burnt-out remains of the Hale house. He has no idea when his feet decided to take him there, but it’s that bad of idea now that his brain has caught up with him. In a town full of people who no longer know him, a tomb sounds sort of poetically perfect for a ghost. 

 

He’s about to set off again, when voices reach him, then the sounds of cars starting up. Laughter. Things you don't usually hear around a burnt out she'll of a house, things you shouldn't hear unless... _hooligans_.

 

Stiles grants himself a second to get on his own case for even thinking the word ‘hooligan’—thanks dad—before he gets pissed. Even when he and Scott were younger and stupider, they didn't go tromping around the Hale house like it was their playground. Sure, they snooped a little, maybe accidentally dug up half of Derek's dead sister, but they didn't play around in the house. They had _some_ respect for the dead, and his respect has only grown the longer he known Derek. Stiles is going to use words at these trespassing people. Harsh words. 

 

"HEY!" He shouts, elbowing his way through the brush so he can stomp towards the group of people lurking around the front porch. "You better not be spray-painting dicks all over the house or my dad will arrest you!"

 

The first person he focuses on is this freckle-faced woman, wearing an expensive black dress that is way too nice for hooligan behavior, turning as the end of her laugh morphs into a confused, " _What_?" 

 

A few of her other friends are looking equally confused, and well dressed. 

 

But Stiles isn't fooled, there's no _decent_ reason for them to be hanging out here. He yells, "Get away from that house!" As he gets closer, waving his arms and trying to make himself look bigger than he is. Some of those teenagers look... Buff.  

 

"Who the hell are you?" One of the buff—uh, not a teenager oops—asks. His smirk is oddly familiar, the v-neck even more so.

 

The freckled woman elbows the man in the gut. "Peter, watch your language." 

 

_Peter._

 

_V-necks._

 

No fucking way. 

 

Actually, now that he’s closer, the car to their left looks a lot like Derek's Camaro, only with different looking wheels and a woman leaning out the window smirking at him. A black-haired, grinning... Mischievous-looking... Familiar to a point. The point being she looks a lot better alive, than faintly blue and torn in half in the woods. 

 

Yes, that's Laura Hale. Alive and well, along with her creepy uncle, Peter-I-Can't-Tell-If-I-Like-You-or-Hate-You-Hale. Following that logic, the person impossibly standing next to Peter is—

 

"You're Derek's mom," he blurts out, suddenly feeling very much like a skinny, defenseless human who just yelled at a pack of not-burnt alive werewolves. The Hale family. The Hale house, which is not burnt, and kind of beautiful if he maybe takes a second to look at it. 

 

He does a double take. 

 

It's nice, without the soot marring the woodwork above the windows, with plants lining each sill, fresh paint over the shutters, the smell of bacon in the air, and a cup of something warm set on the porch railing like someone's getting back to it any second now. 

 

So, apparently the Hale family stays alive, too. All because he's dead—or, uh, because he was never even _born_. Somehow, this keeps the entire Hale family alive, and that is almost worse than his mother coming back to life. Like, he's pretty sure he doesn't want the weight of entire family’s death on his shoulders, because it’s a huge responsibility and now Stiles _can't_ change this. He'd considered the possibility of magicing his way out of this, even after seeing his mom back from a dead. Because while that is terrible wonderful, at least her death was natural, and maybe he can deal with that with some therapy or something, but this is... This is too much. He can't be the reason they die. He can't do that to them. To Derek.

 

Talia is in front of him before he can even finish swallowing down the misery bubbling up in his chest as he turns his gaze away from the perfect, beautiful house. Her eyes seem to categorize every twitch, shudder, wobble, wheeze, nervous picking at his snotty sleeve that he does, until Stiles is forced to look away from her too. How the hell do you look an Alpha in the eye knowing what he knows? Knowing that, in some other universe, Stiles is alive, and she's dead.

 

"Are you alright?"

 

No, he is not alright. He's not even close. 

 

Which he doesn’t say, obviously, so he just sort of shrugs. Because half-answers keep you safe, and that tiny shred of sanity he's clutching to needs to stay put.

 

"He smells like vomit,” Peter sneers. 

 

"Thanks for noticing, i'm sure you can also smell the lack of fucks I give about that," Stiles shoots back automatically. Judging by the pleased-yet-shocked grin forming on Peter's face, he hadn't expected it at all. At least Peter is easier to look at, he’s a familiar not-dead face in the crowd.

 

"I think I like this one."

 

"I'm honored," Stiles spits, heavy on the sarcasm that only serves to please Peter more. 

 

"Oh I _definitely_ like this one," he purrs. "What's your name?" 

 

"Not nice to meet you, i'm called Too Young For You."

 

Peter tilts his head to one side, and Stiles can almost hear the gross, ' _Age is just a number,_ ' crossing his mind before the alpha mutters something under her breath, and Peter looks away. The picture of innocence. 

 

When Talia's focus is back on him, she's offering a tentative smile that Stiles feels dirty for receiving. He's literally the cause of her death in his universe, time-line thing. Somehow. He still hasn't figured out the logistics of it, but the fact of the matter is that she’s standing right in front of him, offering kindness that Stiles doesn’t deserve.

 

"You're a friend of Derek's, then?" She asks, a hint of something more to her question. She's probing him, looking for reasons why a human just came storming over to them, yelling at them to get away from their home and stop spray-painting dicks— _Oh my god, I just yelled that at Talia Hale about dicks—kill me Jesus Christ._

 

As if reading his panic-stricken mind, Talia's smile becomes more sincere, less structured. "It's alright, by the sounds of it, you were running over here to protect our house?" 

 

“I—uh—Derek is—yes?” He tries, swallowing the gross taste of bile in his mouth. "Yeah, I was. I thought you were—I mean, not that you look like hoola—thugs. Not that you look like thugs at all, I just couldn't... See... Very well. The sun was in my eyes." 

 

"It's understandable," Laura calls out from the car. "Peter looks like he stepped out of a 1950's cartoon gangster catalog." 

 

"And you look like that dead skunk I saw on the side of the road near the town sign," Peter replies, only to yelp and flops gracelessly to the ground when the car he's sitting on suddenly moves. Laura cackles. 

 

Talia makes a small, disappointed sound. "Please excuse my family, they have no manners." 

 

"That's good," he blurts out. "I mean, it's good to see them... So lively."

 

Oh Jesus, Stiles sounds like a serial killer making bad puns to fill that hole where his heart is. He needs to get away from them before he says something stupid. Stupider. 

 

Besides, watching them like this is making that nausea come back ten-fold. Like their happiness is sucking the energy out of him, the stuff that kept him going all the way out here in a desperate attempt at finding somewhere safe to hole up for a while. He'd just wanted somewhere safe. Somewhere to escape this happy reality where his parents don't love him, his best friend doesn't know him, and where his life is nothing but a one way ticket to Deathvill for dozens of people. It's too much. God, it's _been_ too much since that _thing_ took over his body, and his grip is starting to loosen. 

 

"I sh-should b-be... Going," he slurs, trying to blink the blurriness from his eyes. He doesn't even realize what his eyes are doing until the first hiccup of a sob steals his breath away. And the second chokes him up completly. 

 

Warm, strong hands catch him when his knees go out. They keep him anchored while Stiles takes shuddering breaths to try to calm himself down, and only ends up wheezing out noises that sound like a dying animal. 

 

It’s just the last straw. He can't take anymore of this. 

 

The darkness is back, swallowing up the worried face of a woman Stiles has only seen pictures of. A dead woman. 

 

He thinks about Derek before he passes out.

 

                                                  

 

**             Part 1:  You Can’t Hear Me  **

 

 

                                                   

 

 

He’s dreaming about Derek's bunny-smile, and how rewarding it felt to see it for the first time, even if it was at his own expense. Like, really rudely at his expense. 

 

And those fingers... Warm, smooth palms against his neck right before he smashes his head into the stealing wheel. Which, uh, isn’t exactly romantic but Stiles has always imagined it going another way. He always wanted it to be something else, something more like scent marking his neck, touching it, holding him close. He wants that, he dreams that. 

 

He dreams of _his_ Derek. The one Stiles never told—the one he willing gave up so that everyone could live. 

 

 

 

 

Stiles opens his eyes, and sucks in a sharp breath. 

 

What he dreamed were familiar hands on the back of his neck are actually lacy pillows trying to strangle him. His face feels warm from the sun streaming in the window, and Stiles squints as he licks the taste of death off his lips. The whole experience confuses him for long moment, because the sun doesn’t come in his window in the morning, so unless it’s later than it feels he shouldn’t be in the sun. Actually, there shouldn’t be lacy pillows in his room, either. 

 

Sitting up, Stiles glares at the confusing window until his eyes adjust to the light and reveal the same purple shutters he’d noticed outside the Hale house before the panic attack turned everything in his brain to mush. There's also that same, almost spicy scent in the air that Stiles had noted coming off of Derek the few times the man got right up in his face to threaten him. Not that he was creeper-sniffing him, or anything like that. Okay, maybe once... Or twice. If all the werewolves get to do it, so can he. 

 

Scott would—No, _stop_. Those thoughts aren't allowed, he can’t deal with thinking about his friends right now. Memory vault shut and sealed. 

 

Stiles takes another deep breath, and forces himself to take stock of where, exactly, he is inside the Hale house. Which is a somewhat small room, with a door, and two windows, and those are just the escape routs, Stiles, stop that.

Right, well, the room is nice, anyway. There's this obviously hand-made quilt hanging up in the space between the two windows, and a similar one spread on top of Stiles’s legs like an afterthought of comfort. The couch under him is small enough so that his legs hang over the edge, but the obviously comfortable enough for him to have stayed sleeping for this long. The itself room is a little spartan, but Stiles finds himself relaxing again when he eyes the very Granny-like sewing desk and notices a large bag with knitting spilling out of it. It feels safe in here, and it probably shouldn't considering this the fact that Granny Hale is probably a werewolf too. Plus the fact that he's a complete stranger to the Hale family, no matter how much he's heard or read about them after the fire. No one knows him here, thus he has no allies in this world, especially not with a pack of werewolves. 

 

Speaking of werewolves, there’s the tell-a-tale tingle of the runes on his arms alerting him of one of his pack members being near by before there’s a single knock on the door, and Stiles scrambles to sit up properly and wipe the drool off his face. The door smacks the wall when it swings open, and in comes Derek Hale, wincing as he steps into the room like he’s going to have to apologize for that.

 

2 seconds is how long it takes for Stiles to know that this isn't _his_ Derek. Because Stiles has never seen that brooding grump of a man ever wince apologetically since he met him. It's just not a Derek thing to do. Apologies and Derek do not exist together.

 

There's also the way he's turned his glare on at Stiles, like he's trying to figure out who he is, rather than thinking about ripping his throat out. Which is almost refreshing, if it wasn’t also heart-stopping and depressing. 

 

"Who are you?" He asks, as direct and blunt as ever. 

 

Stiles lets out a sharp gasp of breath, and tries so, so hard not to blurt out something stupid like, ‘ _You don’t know me?_ ’ 

 

Because he might have been sort of holding out for Derek, like this is some kind of fairy tale where the person you're sort of really crushing on is the _only_ one who remembers you and, yeah, maybe somewhere in Stiles’ head Derek was totally supposed to ride in on a white horse save the day. 

 

Reality is the question repeated, with more anger. 

 

"Who are you and why are you telling my family that we know each other?" Derek snarls. 

 

"Because I _do_ know you." 

 

“I don’t recognize you.”

 

No. No, no, no. Stiles _needs_ someone to know him, come on. “You don’t—dude, it’s Stiles.”

 

“Styles?”

 

“No, gross, I can hear you say the ‘y’ in it. Stiles. I’m Sti-les.”

 

Derek falls silent, and tries to be subtle with the sniffing, but Stiles has been around enough wolves to recognize the usual flair of nostrils. Any other time, he’d chastise Derek for being invasive, but right now his heart is going nuts. He needs him to recognize him, any part of him.

 

“You might not… I mean, it might be hard to catch my scent if you don’t know what you’re looking for.”

 

"What the hell does _that_ mean?” Derek asks, scowling. “And I don't _know_ any kids like you." 

 

_Ooouuuch_. 

 

Stiles bites his lip, and glances down at the knit he now has scrunched up in his hands. He kind of wants to leave right this second, because this is turning out to be a very unsafe place to be. Maybe he can camp out in the creepy bunker place around here somewhere, at least he'll have a roof over his head. Somewhere with less people he cares about looking him in the eye and saying they don't recognize him and causing him to panic. Panicking isn’t cool, he’s already been there, done that. 

 

Yes, that sounds like a plan he should execute immediately. Leaving before he starts crying again.   

 

Shrugging, because he’s gotten way too good at pretending to be unfazed, Stiles lets go of the blanket, smooths it out until it’s perfect, stands up, and stretches. He also pretends that his body doesn't sing like a bowl of corn puffs after the first pour of milk. Jesus, he’s pretty sure he felt better after Gerard beating the crap out of him than he does right now.

 

Then again, he technically died recently, so maybe this is typical of coming back to life. If he ever gets the chance to go back to his timeline, maybe he’ll ask Peter about it.

 

Sadly, Derek possesses the same amount of patience— _none_ —as the one Stiles knew, because he waits maybe three seconds for Stiles to stretch before demanding, "Answer the damn question, or get out of my house." 

 

To which Stiles says, "okay," and breezes right past him out the door. 

 

"Wha—wait!" 

 

Stiles does not wait. In fact, he speed walks his way down an eerily familiar hallway, only drawing to a stop reaches the stairs. Time spent in the real—the alternate—the Hale house that burnt down has long since taught him that the stairs are dangerous things to contend with. It's also unnatural to see them carpeted with a friendly flower pattern lining and a nice red center thing that someone probably debated over and carefully chose to suit the house or something. It’s just so… normal, it seems even worse knowing what he knows.

 

The hand clutching the banister starts to sweat, and for one dizzying moment he's staring once again at the charred wood, and broken boards. He's back where he belongs, with the horrible evidence that people _died_ here. That Derek stayed hidden in this tomb, surrounded by memories of this fucking perfect carpet while Stiles can't even look at some of his mom's stuff. How did Derek do it? How could he stand walking up and down these stairs knowing what they’re supposed to look like, how the carpet felt under his feet?

 

He barely registers the footsteps behind him, but the sharp nastiness to Derek's voice is hard to miss. "What the hell is _wrong_ with you?" 

 

Which is just the last straw on top of the last straw for him at this point. First the guy doesn’t recognize him, second he starts treating him like some kind of brain-dead _child_. Nope, Stiles is done with this. 

 

Whipping his head around, Stiles snarls, "Just because you don't understand what other people are feeling does not grant you the permission to be a spineless asshole. Get the fuck over yourself and your not-so-interlized misogyny issues. Not everyone is as emotionally stunted as you pretend to be." 

 

Derek’s look of shock is funny and all, but Stiles doesn't really have time to appreciate it before he's distracted by the roar of laughter echoing up the stairs. 

 

"Oh I needed to hear that," someone wheezes between giggles, before a face pops around the corner at the bottom of the stairs. Stiles holds back the usual flinch when Peter flashes a grin at him. 

 

"So you weren't lying when you said you and Derek were friends," he says. 

 

"We are not friends!" Derek protests, shoving past Stiles to tromp down the stairs in a werewolf huff. 

 

Peter raises an eyebrow at his nephew as he passes, and adds, "That's not a lie, either. Interesting." 

 

"We're sort of antagonistic friends," Stiles sighs, deciding to brave the slightly less crazy-looking Peter in favor of getting out of the house. Compartmentalizing your emotions and thoughts only goes so far before you run out of, well, compartments. 

 

Derek shouts another, ”We _aren't_ friends!" 

 

"I can see what you mean," Peter drawls, offering Stiles a most genuine smile that he's honestly ever seen on that man's face before. If the carpet was weird, the smile is downright world-ending wrong. 

 

From behind Peter, there's more laughter from a group gathered in the dining room, and Derek muttering something about _letting psychopaths into the house when he's out._ Laura—another presence Stiles still hasn't adjusted to—is still laughing at her brother even as he brushes past her and disappears into what Stiles assumes in the kitchen. They're just so... Nice, and close. Like the family Stiles kind of always wanted, but gave up daydreaming about when his mom died. It’s not like they had a lot of extended family, his mom and dad were it for him. Then it was just his dad, and stuff like Thanksgiving was never much more than a quickly cooked dinner and a movie together. Not that he’s unthankful for his dad, jesus, no, but it was never quite this. 

  
Which Stiles realizes is what his Derek lost, and that guilt comes flooding back in. 

 

“Interesting.”

 

Stiles turns to narrow his eyes at Peter. “You’re starting to sound like Alice, which isn’t a good thing, dude.” 

 

“ _Curiouser and Curiouser_?” Peter mocks, leaning in creepy-close to Stiles and slightly more obviously sniffing at him. 

 

“I think you mean ‘Creepier and Creepier,” Stiles replies, stepping back. 

 

Peter’s eyes seem to light up even more, which is never a good sign. Fuck.“I find it fascinating that you know exactly how to speak to me, as though we’ve spoken before.Now why is that, I wonder?” 

 

Laura, beautiful wonderful Laura appears beside them, saying, “Peter, leave him alone.” 

 

Peter goes on to continue the whole upheaval of Stiles’ image of him, and barks out a laugh that lacks a certain insanity that Stiles is used to hearing. Then, before he knows what’s going on, he’s being dragged into the dining room and shoved unceremoniously into one of the chairs around the table. People pile in around him, Laura to his right, Talia at the head of the table with someone Stiles assumes is Derek’s dad with that really familiar jaw-line. They’re followed by two kids who squeeze in around Peter, leaving three empty chairs on the far end of the table near Stiles. One of which is directly next to him, and is pointedly ignored when Derek comes back into the room with a huge lasagna in his hands. He sits across from the alpha at the far end, and scowls at everyone like it’s their fault Stiles exists. 

 

“Why is he eating with us?” Derek grits out over the chatter of Peter and the kids. 

 

“Because we are decent people, not animals,” Talia reminds him, her eyes narrowing at her son. “I thought you two were friends.” 

 

“We’re not,” Derek snaps. “Whatever he’s told you, it’s a lie. He shouldn’t be sitting here with us.” 

 

His mother continues to stare him down, and without even glancing at Stiles, says, “It wasn’t a lie.”

 

“It is! Maybe his heart beat was—“ 

 

“Derek,” she warns, which is scary and—oh.

 

Stiles clears his throat. “Uh, if this is about the werewolf thing… I kind of already know?”  


The table falls silent, and everyone—seriously, even the kids—is staring at him. Shit, the problem with stuffing his thoughts and emotions away is that his already weak filter is completely absent. Like, maybe don’t tell an entire table-full of werewolves that you know what their big secret is when you’re a stranger to them and could be a hunter. Double shit.

 

“Oops, was that a… should I not have maybe mentioned that?” He asks, voice quiet. 

 

Derek looks ready to explode on his left there, and Peter’s got both arms wrapped around the kids on either side of him. Like Stiles might attack them, or something. Oddly enough, it’s the other three that seem the most calm, which is almost more disconcerting. A calm Alpha does not mean a happy one. 

 

“I see,” Talia murmurs, folding her hands together as she leans forward to study Stiles more carefully than before. “Do you mind telling us how you know, and why my son insists you do not know one another and yet neither of you are lying?”

 

Stiles does not want to do this. All he wanted was to escape, find a place to hole up in while he figured out what to do, and avoid talking to people he knows are dead or who don’t know he’s alive. Is that really too much to ask? 

 

Talia’s expression says, ‘Yes, Stiles, it is.’ 

 

“Okay, so, I know enough about werewolves to fill a book, let’s just put that out there.” Peter growls, and Stiles quickly amends that statement because holy shit he’s an idiot, “Not like a hunter Grimoire or anything. A regular book. I’m not a hunter.”

 

“That’s not—“ Derek begins, only snapping his mouth shut when his mother turns her Alpha glare on him.

 

“Just, yeah, listen to my heart beat, which I know you’re all doing anyway, but listen. I am not a hunter. I have never hunted werewolves or anything super—uh, wait, okay so I might have sort of hunted a Kanima, but he was an asshole, and he got better.” 

 

“ _He_ _got better_?” Peter repeats with disbelief. “That’s impossible, Kanima don’t just ‘get better’.” 

 

Stiles shrugs. “It wasn’t as easy as that, but yeah, hit one with a Jeep and spread some True Love around and it apparently does the trick. If, you know, you ever need to fix a Kanima or something.” 

 

“This is a load of—“ 

 

“Enough, Derek!” Talia snaps, startling one of the kids out of her seat, and Stiles out of this world. Holy shit, now _that’s_ an Alpha presence. His Derek could learn a thing or two about… well, shit. He did say he wasn’t supposed to be Alpha once, so he probably never learned Alpha stuff from his mom before she died. Stiles frowns to himself, trying to imagine how fricken awful it must have been to become an Alpha like that. Humorous ‘I’m the Alpha’ proclamation aside, it must have felt like shit, and guilt, and Stiles really wishes he’d had the time to actually think about that back then. Maybe he wouldn’t have teased Derek so much about it. 

 

“Stiles,” she says, which is a little creepy because the only way she could know his name is if they were listening in to his conversation with Derek upstairs. Werewolves, seriously. “Please continue. I promise less interruptions from now on.”

 

Stiles tries to start again, but Peter seems to have lost interest, and starts serving up some lasagna to the two girls seated next to him and holy shit, it smells so _good_. Stiles doesn’t remember the last time he ate something, maybe sometime after the party? Wait, there was a clearer moment before the fake bomb on the bus where he was barely present… somewhere… but that was almost a week ago, wasn’t it? 

 

Wait, he hasn’t eaten in a _week_?

 

Stiles swallows the rancid taste in his mouth, and ducks his head. All his lies and half truths are rattling around in his head as he tries to shove those memories back into their carefully marked boxes. He can’t think about what he saw when the fox took over his body, he won’t be able to function if he thinks about it. 

 

“Stiles…” 

 

He looks up to find Talia staring at him again. 

 

“Sorry,” he croaks. “Um, where was I?” 

 

“Kanima,” Peter chimes in. 

 

“Right. So, that’s probably the only supernatural creature i’ve actually sort of hunted. Which, again, he’s was asshole, and totally still alive to be an asshole somewhere else.”

 

“Is this locally?” Talia ask, already breaking her promise about interruptions. At least now he knows where Derek gets _that_ from. 

 

He replies, “Close by. Sort of. Not too far away.”

 

Talia narrows her eyes, but doesn’t comment. He knows he’s starting to toe the line of complete lies here, which means he needs to either work himself up or calm the hell down and get control of himself. His heartbeat isn’t the only factor for lie-detecting, though. There’s sweat, and fidgeting, or any one of the millions of nervous ticks he has that could give him away. Besides, he’s already one foot in on the whole panic attack thing here, he might as well go with it and see how far he goes. 

 

“Look, this isn’t really something I like to talk about, okay?” He snaps suddenly, letting the anger that’s been building bubble to the service. The tattoos lining his arms flair up, and Stiles quickly hides them under the table before adding, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I trust you about as much as you trust me, and while I know Derek I don’t know the rest of you.”

 

“You seem to know me,” Peter corrects with a smirk. 

 

Stiles blinks at him. “I—sort of not really… not this version of you.” 

 

“Not this ‘ _version_ ’ of—?” 

 

“How the hell do you think you know me?” interrupts Derek again, his hands clenched around the table so hard it creaks in protest. “Who told you about me?” 

 

Stiles is about to answer when his stomach decides enough is enough, and roars almost as loudly as the Alpha. 

 

“Oh my _god_ ,” Stiles squeaks, wanting to disappear from this house completly. He doesn’t die of embarrassment, but the hoot of laughter that Peter and the kids let out doesn’t help, either. 

 

  
“Eat,” Talia orders, stealing his plate to pile up some cheesy lasagna on it and push it towards him again. “We can talk more about this later.” 

 

Blushing, Stiles tugs the plate closer to him with a murmured ‘thanks’ before loses all sense of control and inhales the food in front of him in record time. There’s looks being shared above his head, but thankfully no one decides to comment on his behavior. Not even when he goes for seconds. Instead, Derek’s parents start talking about work,and a lot of benign stuff that couldn’t be used against them by, say, a weird stranger who happens to know their family secret and is currently eating at their table. It’s a nice change, though, and Stiles finds himself slowly being lulled into that warm family feeling the share. 

 

He doesn’t miss the fact that Derek refuses to take his eyes off of him the entire time, or that he rarely says a thing when his mother asks him how the drive back was, or the way his eyes flash when Talia suggests that Stiles takes a nap after he nearly drops his head into his bowl of ice cream. 

 

But he’s too wrapped up in the welcoming feeling Talia extrudes to care right now, and by the time his head hits the lacy pillow, he’s already warm, and stuffed full of food, and half asleep.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Derek wants to scream at his family while they sit there and chat about their day like there isn’t a perfect stranger sitting at their table, eating their food, smiling at Peter’s jokes. But he can’t do that, so, instead, he grits his teeth until the boy’s tucked into the couch upstairs again, Laura and his dad have vanished into the kitchen to tackle the dishes, and Peter’s magically disappears with the girls like he usually does when it’s time to clean up. 

 

“Mom—“ 

 

“Derek, we need to handle this more delicately than you think,” she dictates, giving him a sharp look that brooks no room for argument, and it’s all he can do to keep himself from growling in frustration. 

 

He just… does not understand this. They spent years being so painfully careful about who they allowed in the house, every single one of Cora’s friends being carefully vetted before invited over for dinner, every one of Laura’s crushes being checked out before she was ‘allowed’ to date anyone. Meanwhile, Derek was under the most scrutiny of them all, to the point where he stopped trying to bring anyone home. 

 

Then again, that _was_ with good reason. 

 

“Can we just… agree that this is weird?” He sighs, running a hand over his face. It’s already been a long day, first with the weird dreams waking him up too early, then the long drive back with his dad trying to get him to talk about his work at the station. It’s not that he hates talking to his dad, there’s just not much to talk about when Beacon Hills’ crime rates somewhere between a tree falling on someone’s garage, and a lost cat. 

 

Talia flashes him one of her half-smiles, and reaches out to pull him in for a warm hug. “I know it’s weird, but I have a feeling this is the right thing to do. You didn’t see him when he first showed up in the yard. He looked half-dead, and the stench of fear coming off of him was… worrying.” 

 

“I’m staying here until he leaves,” Derek grunts into her shoulder, giving her an extra squeeze before letting go. “I don’t know what he’s running from, but I want to be here when it catches up with him.” 

 

“Alright, but be nice. He’s obviously attached to you in some way.”

 

Derek scowls, like he needed a reminder of that. “I’m serious, I don’t know him at all.”

 

His mother shrugs before she grabs the last pile of dirty plates, and drops them into Derek’s hands. “That might be true, but clearly he knows you.” 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s probably really, super-duper stupid of him, but Stiles starts to relax to life in the Hale house. It is kind of weird to go from your average high-schooler schedule to lurking around the house while everyone else goes off to work, or in Cora’s case, school, but it’s not like Stiles really minds getting a break. 

 

Even if said break is constantly supervised by Peter—who apparently doesn’t work—or Derek when his shift ends. Which is slightly more uncomfortable with Derek glaring at him, but whatever, he’s not one of the pack. That being said, the older members of the family seem to accept his presence in their home with an ease that borders on suspicious. Stiles is pretty sure that they’ve looked into him, which was apparently Derek’s job because Derek is a fucking deputy who works with his dad and _holy shit_ —Stiles has no words for how uncomfortable that makes him feel when he can’t even see his dad because his dad doesn’t… even know he exists. 

 

Suffice to say, that knowledge and the lack of information they find on him doesn’t seem to melt any of that ice between him and Derek.

 

There’s also just this underlying tension between the two of them that he can’t seem to squash. He knows Derek doesn’t trust him, but he also doesn’t know why he hasn’t been interrogated about who he is any further than that first lunch together. It seems like they’re just waiting on him, which is probably a bad idea because Stiles can procrastinate for years if he wants to. Plus, he’s kind of going through some serious withdrawal from his Ritalin and he doesn’t even want to talk about how little sleep he’s getting. 

 

It’s not just the memories of what he’s done—what he’s watched his body do while he gritted his teeth and waited for that perfect moment. It’s not the fact that neither his dad or his friends seemed to recognize the change between Stiles and the fox. 

 

_Why haven't they noticed the thing wearing his skin yet? How does that cruelty in his laugh go unnoticed, the sharpness to his words unchecked? How could they let him near them when he sounds so wrong and moves like a predator? How did they miss it?_

 

All the changes. The things that he never was, words he'd never use, a cruelty even he could never even aspire to. 

 

But it’s not just those thoughts that keep him awake at night, there’s the ones about his mother and father too. The fact that they’re only a few miles away, living happily without ever knowing of his existence and he’s nothing to them, he’s nothing to his friends, he’s either nothing or that _monster_ all night long until he wakes up screaming and sobbing in the middle of the night. Until he gives up on sleep all together and stares at the knitting hanging on the wall like it holds the secrets to the universe. Or sleep, he’d settle for sleep. 

 

Suffice to say, he’s not in the mood for Derek’s grumpy bullshit today.

 

“He’s not coming,” Derek grumbles for the third time since Anne—one of Peter’s daughters—suggested that Stiles come with them on the full moon run. 

 

“But unnnccaaa Deeeerrreeeek!” She whines, jumping up in down impatiently. 

 

“Look, I don’t want to intrude on your private rituals,” Stiles says, hoping to quickly stop what will soon become yet another gigantic blow-out between Derek and his family. All Stiles seems to do is make them argue… over him. It’s not a good feeling, and if he was any braver, he’d have left days ago. But, well, he’s not. He’s not brave at all. 

 

“But it’s fun!” Ella whimpers, appearing by Anne’s side in the blink of an eye. “I want ‘Tiles to come!” 

 

Stiles shoots Derek a, ‘ _What can you do_?’ sort of look, that earns him yet another scowl.Whatever, it’s not like Stiles asked to come. In fact, he’d carefully avoiding asking what their plans were for the full moon. Like, as far as Stiles knew, _his_ Derek spent most of his full moons either chaining up his betas, or Lone Wolfing around in the woods once they were gone. 

 

“Girls,” Peter’s voice purrs from directly behind him. He does not jump, thank you very much. “Stiles is a human, he wouldn’t be safe on the run.” 

 

“I won’t bite him!” Anne pipes up, looking crestfallen that her father would even _suggest_ such a thing. 

 

“There are things more dangerous than you out there, darling.” 

 

 

“I’ll fight them!” Ella argues, followed soon by Anne starting to explain her plan for keeping Stiles safe. 

  
It’s adorable as hell, but Stiles can’t help but meet Derek’s gaze over their heads, and wince. The man has not warmed up to him at all, in fact, every day spent here seems topiss Derek off even more. 

 

“He’s not coming, and that’s final,” Derek snarls, successfully shutting both of the kids up. Peter bares his teeth at his nephew and flashes his eyes before he pulls the pouting girls out to the porch where the rest of the family is getting ready for the run. 

 

Stiles tries to swallow the sick feeling that’ Derek’s anger usually stirs up, and starts to shuffle up the stairs before he gets into another glare-contest with the Eyebrow King. 

 

There’s a snappish little order of, “Stay in your room,” from behind him that makes him stop and slowly turn around. 

 

“Yeah, no,” he says, going full bitchy and flipping the werewolf off. “You are not my alpha, so you can shove your bitchy little control issues up your furry little ass.” 

 

Derek looks like he’s ready to argue that point until the waves come home, but something shifts in his stance, and he looks away. He mutters something under his breath like a sullen teenager. 

 

“Excuse me?” Stiles snarks, crossing his arms over his chest. 

 

Derek mutters again, and this is just ridiculous. 

 

“Would you just spit it out!?” 

 

“It’s _safer_ ,” Derek hisses, and before Stiles can be properly mind-boggled over his response, the werewolf flashes his eyes at him, and darts out the front door. 

 

Stiles waits for—who knows—maybe someone to come back in and explain what the hell _that_ was about. But no one shows their face, and a few minutes later there’s a scrambling of feet on the porch, before several long howls echo out into the night. 

 

 

“Oooo-kaaay, that was weird,” he decides, and goes to watch Battlestar Galactica in the living room, because Derek Hale is not the boss of him.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It’s after the full moon that Derek knows something is wrong. No, that’s not quite true. It’s the day Stiles arrives that he knows something is wrong, he just doesn’t believe it until the full moon. Because every single night for the past two weeks, Derek has been plagued with dreams about him. 

 

At first, he doesn’t really think about it. A flash of amber eyes here, a voice pitched in anger, Derek crowding Stiles against something and snarling at him. It’s not that far off from how they interact in life, so he tries not to think too hard about it. But then things get weird. 

  
Like the lingering looks his dream-self seems to share with the kid. Long drawn out moments where everything but them seems to be moving too fast and all Derek can do is stare and stare and ache for something—something he doesn’t even know that he wants. Those are bad enough, but then there’s flashes of the same sort of arguing, but he feels the laughter in the back of his throat. Or the way his hand lingers on Stiles’ arm just a little too long as they run after something—a lizard thing. Which Derek just… ignores, because he didn’t think he had that good of an imagination if he’s being honest.

 

He’s obviously going crazy, though, because he _hates_ Stiles. He hates how he’s integrated himself into their lives, how Peter seems fascinated by him, how his sisters and the girls seem to adore him, how his mom disappears into the sewing room as soon as she hears Stiles wake up screaming from his own nightmares. And yet… he had wanted him safe on the full moon. 

 

He wants him safe _all the time._

 

Which might reflect on how messed up he’s become by the third week, when they all sit down for dinner together like one big family, plus Stiles. 

 

Stiles, who helping Cora set the table and carry out food, all the while cracking some dirty joke about a teacher that has his sister roaring with laughter. Derek ignores the wolf pacing in the back of his mind, telling him to join in and banter with the kid like they do in his dreams, to get closer to him. Talk to him. Take him. _Claim him._

 

_Wow, no. No, that is not happening_ , Derek thinks, shaking his head and carefully putting a clamp down on the more crazy thoughts kicking around in his head today. 

Even so, he still finds himself drawn to the spot next to Stiles that he’s dutifully taken up these past few weeks. When Stiles turns his smile towards him, however, it fades painfully fast. 

 

“You don’t have to keep sitting next to me, i’m not going to poison someone at the table,” he says bitterly, setting a bowl of bacon-wrapped green beans down sharply.

 

Derek grunts out, “Maybe I _like_ sitting here,” and plops himself down into the chair before Stiles can protest anymore. Stiles stands there and gapes at him, which so much more rewarding than the usual glares the exchange that it has Derek flashing a toothy grin at the kid. Derek is going to have to surprise him more often, if he’s going to let out such a pleasing scent like—wait, no. He’s not supposed to be nice, he’s supposed to be keeping an eye on him for Christ’s sake. What the hell is _wrong_ with him? 

 

He’s acting like… almost like he does in his dreams.  


Derek ducks his head and focuses on the plate in front of him. He hear’s Stiles mutter a confused, “Okay then,” as he sits down and starts filling up his plate with food. To Derek’s relief, Peter takes over the conversation and draws everyone’s attention away from their awkward exchange. Well, at least he thinks it does, until he catches his mother’s considering gaze one him. 

  
He raises an eyebrow at her, ignoring the chunk of carrot that goes flying past him when Anne and Ella start throwing them at Stiles in retaliation for the random green bean he sent their way. Before he can comment, however, Talia puts a hand up to silence everyone. 

 

“Someone is here.” 

 

After a moment’s silence, his dad hums, “Ah, it’s Claudia. I wonder what she wants.”

 

Derek frowns, because while Claudia Stilinski is very welcome in their house after everything she’s done to help them, she’s still not someone Derek wants to see.   
  
Especially considering she’s the one who saw him being kissed by Kate, and immediately told her husband—and sherif—who came over and told his parents.

Which, in the end was a good thing considering the fact that they exposed her plans to murder his entire family, _and_ found out that Claudia was sick and gave her the bite to save her life. So, it was a win-win for everyone except Derek, who ended up with mountains of guilt and two years of mandatory therapy where they went over the fact that it was statutory rape, therefor not his fault. 

 

By the time Derek finally gave them the breakdown they were looking for, he was in his late teens and already pulling away from the pack. It wasn’t pretty, and he didn’t exactly feel better after it, but apparently his freak-out was a breakthrough. He’s a lot better now, obviously, he just… can’t look Mrs. Stilinski in the eye after all that. 

 

But his reaction is nothing compared Stiles.

 

Beside him, Stiles sort of freezes before he drops his fork and pushes away from the table. Derek automatically reaches out to him, confused and concerned at the waves of fear coming off of him, and the weird jerky movements as he tries to back away from them. 

 

“I can’t see her,” he babbles, “I—I’m sorry, but can I just hide up in—“

 

“Stiles, it’s alright, she’s pack—“

 

“No. I can’t—You don’t u-understand,” he stammers, shaking his head before stumbles backwards into the hallway. Derek can hear her car now, the low rumble drawing close as she passes the first set of wards Deaton placed around the house. 

 

There’s a flicker of something in his chest—doubt, confusion—then it’s gone again, and Stiles is just _freaking out_. His eyes are darting around the room, his whole posture is cagey and desperate until he locks eyes with Derek and goes still again.

 

“Please,” he begs. 

 

 

That’s all he needs to hear before he grabs Stiles’ hand, and pulls him up the stairs. 

 

 

                                                  

 

**            Part 2:  Burning Horses **

 

 

                                                   

 

 

Stiles goes somewhere else in his head once he’s hidden away in the nice, calming Granny room again. He’s also sort of hiding under the blanket, even though there’s no need to actually hide while he’s _inside_ the room, but Derek’s lurking and Stiles would rather act like a two year-old than look at him right now.

 

Also, since he lacks werewolf senses, specifically the hearing part of it, there’s no rhyme or reason to try to listen in on the conversation happening down stairs. That’s his excuse, anyway. The real reason is because he’s fucking terrified of what he might hear. 

 

Why is his mom here? How does she even know the Hales, anyway? Did she know them back in his timeline? How is it possible that the two groups of people who didn’t die because of him even know one another? That seems really suspicious. 

Whatever, his brain wants a vacation, so he starts thinking about calming things like puppies, and Derek’s stupid bunny teeth. Actually, that’s not really calming considering the not-his-Derek who’s currently standing by the door. 

“I miss you, Sourwolf,” he whispers into the blue and white knit pattern covering his face, and ignores the confused grunt he gets in response. It’s stupid to miss someone you’ve never really had, but—no, you know what, Stiles _did_ have him. Maybe it wasn’t, like, _had_ -had, or whatever, but Stiles had Derek on his side. Stiles had a Derek who would save his ass whenever it was in trouble, or banter with him when they got bored and irritable enough, or go running around looking for him for more than 24 hours when he went missing thanks to the demon keeping him locked up in a basement. 

Or underground? Those memories are still foggy at best, since he was already starting to loose his mind at that point. The important part, though, was that Derek _looked_ for him. And Scott—Scott was—ah shit, he can’t think about Scott either. All his usual go-to thoughts aren’t that calming when they only serve to remind him that these people aren’t _here_. Even thoughts about puppies lead back to his best friend and his friggen puppy-dog eyes when he wants something, or the time at the veterinary clinic when he—

Stiles snaps out of his Self Pity Party and yanks the blanket off his face. He’s such a wold-class idiot. There _is_ one person who might know what’s going on and how to fix it. The only problem is, Stiles has never really trusted Deaton, not as much as Scott always did. And it’s not like he got these tattoos just for sensing his pack, they’re supposed to help him focus his Spark and do cool things. Well, hypothetically, he didn’t exactly find anyone to teach him how, and, yeah, Deaton wasn’t an option for him. 

But, maybe this Deaton is better, less creepy, more answery. Maybe he can trust him enough to wheedle a little information out of him. He is, after all, the Hale pack Emissary, right? Deaton has to know about this kind of time-line jumping thing, or at least knows a way to fix it so that Stiles actually exists again without being the cause of Derek’s entire family dying. That’s kind of a deal-breaker here. They _can’t_ die.   
  
And Deaton is kind of his only option.

Standing up as slowly as he can, Stiles sneaks a look at his guard dog. Who just so happens to be staring at him. 

“What?”

"You never answered the question." 

"What? Dude, you haven't even _asked_ a question," Stiles snaps, impatient to get out of here and finally fix this mess.

"The one my mother asked," Derek explains, pushing into Stiles’ space until he stumbles backwards into the sewing table. Stiles is trying really super hard not to freak out right now, because now is not a great time for the old Derek to show up again. He needs to get to Deaton, and get out of this time-line. He needs to fix this. He wants _his_ Derek back.

"I answered her right away,” he argues, trying to shove Derek back and—surprise, not getting far. Stupid wall of muscles. 

"No, you told us that you know about werewolves." Derek leans in close, successfully pinning him against the desk in a way that has his heart doing a little tango. Sadly, Stiles has to remind himself that this isn’t the Derek he has a history with. They’ve never saved each other’s lives, they’ve barely even joked around, they’ve never paused in the middle of threatening one another to glance at the other’s lips and—fuck, Stiles hates this Derek so much.

"You never said how you knew that my family are werewolves, or how you're able to lie about us being friends with me so damn well." 

A little voice in the back of his head whispers, ' _he has a point_ ,' which, maybe, but shut up. Stiles was trying to avoid the truth as much as possible, and of course Derek Hale has to shove his nose into it and fuck things up. That steady gaze, though, leaves no more wiggle room. Stiles is going to have to say something, and it's going to have to be as close to the truth is possible. 

"Okay, alright. I'll explain if you back off a little," he begins, waiting until Derek takes a step back before he starts speaking again. "I figured out that werewolves were a thing when someone I knew got bitten. After that—"

"Who?"

"No one you know. Can I continue?" 

Derek's eyes narrow, but he jerks his head in a tiny nod. 

"Right, so I figured out that you guys were werewolves kinda easily after that." Here comes the hard part. "Someone actually ended up telling me after I'd already started suspecting it." 

"Who told you?" 

"He was... A stranger, at the time." 

Derek raises an eyebrow. "And?" 

"And now he's someone I trust and care about, so no, i'm not giving you his name." 

The other man's eyebrows did a complicated dance of furrowing, than rising, then furrowing again. Something was different about him lately, it was almost like he was second guessing everything he says to Stiles.

"As for the whole friends thing..." Stiles trails off with an awkward shrug. "If you believe in something strong enough, it becomes a truth." 

"I'm not your friend just because you believe it," Derek points out, ever so helpfully. "And this person who told you about us... It was definitely a male?" 

"Uuuh, yeah?”

Derek looks away sharply, his jaw clenching and unclenching in a way that looks painful. Something's on his mind, which usually triggers Stiles' patented badgering until Derek breaks and tells him. This time, however, Stiles has to wait and see what happens.

It takes a long time to him to mutter, “Was their last name ‘Argent’?” 

_Oh my god_. 

Reaching a hand out without thinking, Stiles grabs Derek’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “No, it wasn’t one of them. I promise you, it was someone with good intentions, who never meant any harm to your family.” 

_It’s literally you._

Derek’s eyes rise to meet his own, that old familiar fear lurking behind his grim frown. Stiles isn’t an idiot, he knows something still happened with Kate, even if she didn’t succeed in burning the house down. As much as he wants to ask—as much as he needs to know—he _not_ an idiot. 

“You’re not lying,” Derek whispers, and Stiles tries not to think too hard about how close they’re standing, or the fact that his hand is still on Derek’s shoulder, or the feeling of trust that’s going on here that probably shouldn’t be. Stiles knows better—at least, he should know better—but he’s been trusting his own Derek for a lot longer than he’s let on. It’s not about to stop just because this Derek doesn’t know him. 

“This is going to be weird,” he begins, letting go of Derek’s shoulder. “But can I ask you a favor?” 

Derek’s eyebrows do something weird again for a second, and he sort of sways closer to Stiles before catching himself and his expression goes carefully blank. “What?”

“Can I get a ride?” 

There’s a long pause where Stiles is almost sure Derek’s going to say ‘no’, but before he can start back-peddling, the man shrugs like it’s no big deal that this strange dude just asked him a favor out of no-where.

“Sure.”

 

* * *

 

The drive to the vet clinic starts out quiet, and slightly weird, but Stiles is too wound up from what he’s about to do to care. Derek’s always weird, whatever, he’s about to fuck around with time and universes in a few minutes here.

With a guy he kind of trusts less than Gerard Argent. At least Gerard was stupidly transparent. 

“How do you know Deaton?” Derek asks out of the blue. 

Right, probably weird knowing about their Emissary. “Uh… my friend knows him.”

“The same friend who got bitten?” 

“Right.”

“Deaton’s never mentioned him.”

Stiles frowns at him, but Derek’s focus is on the road. “What, do you like to go and interrogate Deaton about his friends?” 

“No, but—“

“But _nothing_. Butt out,” Stiles replies, waving a hand at the—oh, growling werewolf, nice. “Dude, please. I’m not in the mood for this right now. We just crawled out the window of your house and i’m about to… do something big.”

Derek stops growling, but the sharp frown doesn’t go away. “You were the one who said we had to sneak out past Claudia, and what do you mean ‘big’?”

“It’s a secret,” Stiles mutters, turning away to look out the window, and frowning. Didn’t they already pass the laundromat? That’s, like, five streets away from the clinic. 

“Stiles, can you please just…” Derek trails off, and the car starts to slow down. Before he can protest, the car takes a sudden sharp turn down a side street and sends him smashing into the window. 

“Dude, what the fuck?!” he yelps, gripping his head and god dammit, he swears he’s bleeding. 

“Something’s off,” is all Derek says before they’re taking another sharp turn. Stiles huffs at him, and tries to figure out where they are. 

 

They pass the laundromat. 

 

“Uh… yeah, I think you’re right.” 

Derek mutters something something under his breath, and away they go around another corner. Stiles waits, holding his breath until the laundromat goes flashing by yet again. 

“Shit, we’re stuck in some kind of a loop,” Stiles breathes, panic started to claw its way into his chest. He’s not good with creepy stuff like this. Give him a werewolf with claws and teeth any day over spooky… laundromats, okay?

He looks at Derek, who’s claws have started to show, and asks, “What do we do?”

“I don’t think we can back to the house, I just tried two different streets that should have connected back to the main road,” he answers, flexing his clawed fingers around the steering wheel. He flicks his eyes towards Stiles, and for the first time in a while, Stiles sees some of his Derek in them. 

“I’m going to try something.” 

“Oh god, this is going to hurt, isn’t it?” 

“Hold on.” 

Stiles wheezes out a laugh, and does as he’s told. 

They pass the same buildings one more time before Derek starts to press on the gas. Everything becomes a blur around them, flecks of color and light whizzing by until Derek yanks the wheel to the left and goes smashing through a fence. Stiles thinks he maybe screams, a little bit, and there goes a bird bath, and a porch. He screams again when they hit another fence, Derek’s muscular arms shuddering as he struggles to keep control of the car. 

“You’re going to kill us!” Stiles shouts at him, just in time for them to ram into a chainlink fence and go skidding into a parking lot. 

“We’re… almost… there.”

And he’s right, they are. Stiles can actually see the top of Deaton’s building up ahead, just a few yards ahead of them. But he can also see shadows darting past them, keeping up with the car even as it barrels through smaller, white-picket fence. 

Stiles opens his mouth to warn Derek about the shadow-things, when the car stops in a burst of noise.   
  
Stiles doesn’t stop. Stiles keeps on going, right through the windshield.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“-iles…” 

_Hnnno_. 

“Stiles, please… come on.” 

No, Stiles does not want to come on. Stiles hurts too much to come on, and it’s nice and dark in here. 

“Please, you little shit, wake up.” 

Stiles wrinkles his nose, which, ow, and forces his eyes open just so he can glare at fucking Derek Hale. “You’re a little shit.” 

“Nice to know you’re alive,” Derek sighs, bringing Stiles closer to his face for—a nuzzle? Something, Stiles is confused—before setting his head back down again. “I thought I really killed you for a minute there.”

“Nah…” Stiles tries to look around, but whoa, woozy. And there’s a lot of burning things around them, apparently. That’s bad, right? “Wassgoin’ on?”

“I hit something,” Derek explains, a hand reaching up to cup Stiles’ face gently. “Some kind of barrier around the building I couldn’t see. I got you inside before those things surrounded us.” 

“Things?” Stiles furrows his brow. Wasn’t there things he was supposed to warn Derek about? Around the car? He can’t remember, it’s weird. 

Derek flashes him the weakest smile Stiles has ever seen, and says, “Don’t worry about them, I think we’re safe in here.” 

Which is weird, because this Derek doesn’t seem like the type to reassure him like that. Hell, his Derek rarely did it, either. Stiles narrows his eyes at the man above him, and decides that’s enough of that. He’s already pushing himself up and out of Derek’s lap before he realizes something’s super wrong with his arm. “Oh fuck—what the hell!? Did you break my arm?” 

“Not personally,” Derek pouts, reaching out to firmly wrap a hand around Stiles’ wrist. He’s about to pretest—albeit weakly—when he notices trails of black crawling up Derek’s arm. 

“You’re… you’re drawing my pain?” he asks faintly, painfully aware of how squeaky he sounds. “You don’t have to do that.” 

“Trust me, it’s better that I do.” 

Which is… okay. Stiles isn’t going to argue, he’s A-Ok without pain, thanks. He’s also just going to ignore the intense worried look he’s getting from Derek, and try to figure out where they are.   
  
The burning things are, apparently, parts of the car that made it through the barrier with them. He’s pretty sure he also has parts of the car embedded in his body somewhere, and he’s not looking at the arm, gross, no. The room they’re in looks like it might have been the clinic’s waiting room at some point, before someone came in and Hieronymus Bosch’d the place.

The chairs are half melted from the heat of the small fires scattered around the room. The walls seem to change size, shape, even distance from them as he casts a quick look around. One of the posters about getting shots for your outdoor cats disappears right before his eyes, startling a gasp out of the man beside him. On the far side of the waiting room, the front desk is a mere sketch of what it should be, the basic shape of it the only thing remotely close to the actual thing.   
  
It’s like someone asked a kid to draw what Deaton’s office looks like, with their eyes closed.

Something slides into place in his mind the exact moment Deaton-not-Deaton steps through the door to the back, and smiles calmly at them. 

“Hello Stiles.” 

Derek’s grip on his wrist tightens, sending off warning bells in his head. Without taking his eyes off of Deaton, Stiles shifts his arm until Derek’s hand is just a tiny bit higher on his wrist. 

“Sooo, what’s up Doc?” He calls out, going for casual, not scared-out-of-his-fucking-mind. “Cool looking office you’ve got here. I mean, you tried, you really did.” 

Deaton gives him a cool look, and shrugs, clearly not giving a single shit that his office isn’t up to snuff. “I never expected you to visit here, so why bother with accuracy?” 

“How the hell did you even know I’d avoid this place?” Stiles asks, ignoring the confused eyebrow thing Derek was doing at him. He’s not… thinking about Derek right now, he can’t afford anymore confusions. 

“It’s all in your mind, Stiles,” Deaton replies, reaching out to brush a finger along the desk. The brown-shaped blob wiggles and sharpens into something more wood-like, and stable. “All I had to do was collect the right bits of information.” 

“Yeah, right, to make up a nice little word for me,” he sneers, curling his hands into fists. “The yellow car was a nice touch.” 

From his side, Derek murmurs a confused, “ _What_?” while Deaton flashes way too many teeth at them. Stiles swallows nervously, and takes a small step forward without pulling free of Derek’s grip. Not yet, it’s not the right moment. He just needs to be sure.

_Keep him talking, keep talking._

“So, some points for accuracy, I guess,” he drawls, shifting his weight to his other foot, and wait, just wait. “I think you did a better job with the basement, though.” 

Deaton ripples. His entire fucking body _ripples,_ and it takes all of his willpower not to run right now. It’s worth it, though, because there’s nothing these evil assholes like more than to show off. All you have to too is lightly imply they’re not as awesome at something as they could be, and… wa la. 

The room starts to shift, and Stiles notices little things he never thought about before becoming sharper. Like the little shelf of dog-biscuit jars on the wall by the door, or the sign with the dog and the cat on it that was an orange blob a minute ago. He watches, biting back a sharp smile of satisfaction as the entire building groans, and shifts, and slowly but surely becomes Beacon Hills Animal Clinic. 

“Is this more comfortable, Stiles?” the thing wearing Deaton inquires, sounding smug. 

Stiles gives Derek one last look, and takes a deep breath. 

The only thing he ever learned about his conduit tattoos was that he was never, ever supposed to let the magic build it, it’s always supposed to have a way out.

Which is why the moment he opens his hands, it’s like a bomb going off.

Someone screams as the burst of magic pulses out from his body, sending both Derek and Deaton flying. But he doesn’t have time to care—Derek’s not real anyway—and he needs to get through that door before the effects wear off. 

Darting forward, Stiles jump-slides over the counter top, landing off balance and nearly stumbling into the mess of Deaton-like bits on the floor. They shudder at his presence, and start to shift back together even as Stiles catches himself with his good hand, and bolts for the door. 

“Come on, office… office office accurate office,” he chants, running straight into the door at the end that should be his office and—yes! Oh thank fuck, the books are actually here. Slamming the door behind him, Stiles twists the lock, and hurries around the desk to start scanning the tittles. Some of them don’t make sense, but for now, that’s only because Stiles can’t read Korean or Ancient Greek. That’s not what he’s looking for, anyway, he knows he’s seen it before. A simple little black book with a gold bird skull on it. Stiles shoves books out of the way, starting to panic. 

It _has_ to be here, Stiles remembers the exact day he snuck into Deaton’s office and opened the book up. He even remembers the page number, number 12. 

“Oh come on,” he begs, trying to ignore the shuffle-thump sound of something outside the door. “Come on come on, it has to be—“ 

“Ssssstiiiilleesssssssss…” 

_Oh god_ —okay, new plan, magic. Magic it into being. Right. 

“Sssttiiiilessss… ansssswer my riddle Ssstiiiilessssss,” the voice growls through the door, and holy shit, it’s just playing with him. There’s no way a door is keeping it out, there’s no way—he’s—he can’t— 

“STILES!?” 

Stiles flinches at the sound of Derek’s voice, and for a second he appreciates the cruelty of the fox using it. It’s a smart move, it’s enough to get Stiles to stop and stare at the bookshelf with the weight of everything and nothing on his shoulders. 

There’s no one to save here… it’s all fake. No mother, no Hale family, no cute little Anne and Ella. No Derek. 

There’s the book, though. 

Letting out a whoop of joy, Stiles grabs it and tears it open. The writing is a little wriggly under his fingers, and Stiles wills it to just be still as turns to page 12, and rips it out.   
  
Something makes a wet thud against the door, startling Stiles away from the book. He has what he needs, now he just needs to get out of here. It’s supposed to just be a matter of believing, but, yeah, he’s never been really good at that.

“Stiiiiiiilessss,” the voice slurs, sounding closer. 

Stiles closes his eyes, clutching the paper in his hand. He just needs to believe. He’s not in Deaton’s office, he’s outside. He’s where he needs to be.   
  
There’s a flicker, just a flash of an image behind his eyes and he grabs on to it and just _goes_.

 

 

* * *

 

 

' _The tree exists_ ,' is all Stiles can think as he stands there, one hand curled loosely against the slowly rising swelling around his fractured arm, the other clutching at the torn out page of the book. 

 

It exists. 

 

Which means he can really do this, and do it right. 

 

Stiles straightens up, and shuffles across the clearing as fast as he can.  "Alright spooky ass stump, it's just you and me now." 

 

The ground under him groans in response, really driving that 'spooky' feeling home. Which is cool and all, but Stiles doesn't have the time to appreciate all that is magic right now. If what the page in his hand says is right, he has maybe twenty minutes before the shift in power becomes set in stone and Stiles loses everything. As in, everything he thought he’d already saved before by sacrificing himself to the damn fox.

 

He was willing to do it before, he’s more than willing to do it again.

 

Stiles smiles ruefully to himself, and spreads out the blood stained page on top of the stump. The words are blurry, and almost impossible to read in the fading light, but for once Stiles doesn't panic. This isn't the Nogitsune, just good old fashion pain and exhaustion making his body start to slowly shut down.  

 

With his good hand braced on the tree stump, Stiles manages to scramble up until he's seated somewhere near the center with the paper in front of him, and his broken arm hanging loosely by his side. He's lucky the spell requires blood, and he just so happens to have a good amount of it leaking out of him right now, too.

 

He starts giggling, which is probably a bad sign and all that. But, whatever. He just fought a super old fox demon thing and temporarily won, he's allowed to giggle. 

 

"Stiles."

 

"HO-lee shit!" Stiles screeches, nearly flinging himself off the stump until a familiar figure steps out of the shadows. "Fuck! Derek, you fucking fuck! How are you even _here_?” 

 

"Eloquent as always," the man sighs, before coming to a stop just out of reach of the tree. He looks exhausted, and beat, and bleeding, why is he bleeding if he’s not real? 

 

”I knew you'd come here, I felt it." 

 

“Uh… why aren’t you in Creepy Deaton form?” he asks slowly, jumping a little when Derek stumbles closer. 

 

“I don’t know what you—Stiles, i’m real. I’m Derek.”

 

“Prove it. Say something only Derek would know.”

 

“He’s been inside your head, i’m not sure—“

 

Stiles huffs, “Come on, he couldn’t even get the desk right when he wasn’t paying attention. Just say _something_.” 

 

Derek makes a face, and ducks his head. He’s silent so long, Stiles almost forgets to listen when he hear’s him speak up again. “You called me ‘Sourwolf’… outside the high school.” 

 

Stiles brightens up for a single second. “Oh yeah! You remember that? That’s—that… that happened with _my_ Derek.”

 

Derek’ raises an eyebrow at him, and says nothing. 

 

“Oh no no, this is a trick, you’re not fucking tricking me you stupid tricky trickster,” Stiles growls, picking up the paper and glaring at him. 

 

“Stiles, it’s not—“

 

“Shut up! I need to finish this spell so I can save everyone and die like i’m supposed to.”

 

 

Derek twitches, his hand reaching out in an aborted attempt to reach him. Stiles knows that he won't be able to, but doesn't relish the look of surprise and hurt on Derek's face. 

 

"Stiles, please... Please just trust me this one time and let me explain." 

 

Stiles freezes, dragging his gaze away from Derek's outstretched hand to his eyes. No, it's not just pain he sees there. It's _guilt_. 

 

Why the hell is fake-Derek feeling guilty? 

 

"Explain what?" He asks slowly, a bad feeling worming its way into his chest. 

 

Derek doesn't reply right away, but instead drops his hand and takes a step back. It’s just… it’s such a Derek thing to do, to step back, set up a nice wall around himself.

  
But it _can’t_ be.

 

"Explain _what_ , Derek? What the hell do you need to _explain_?" 

 

"You—this whole world is..." Derek lets out a sharp growl, and half shifts before him, anger and sadness at war across his features. "None of this is what it was meant to be, and I swear I didn't know." 

 

Derek turns to face him again, his eyes pleading Stiles to, what? Forgive him? Stiles doesn't even understand what the hell is going on yet. 

 

"What the fuck are you talking about?" He snaps, trying—oh, he's trying _so_ hard not to let his magic bubble over right now. 

 

"I forgot for a while..."

 

Stiles gives up on the whole holding back thing. 

 

"Forgot _what_?!" He explodes, sending his little paper flying off the tree stump to land on the ground right in front of Derek. 

 

Who just grimaces, and looks away again. When he finally speaks, it's in a voice so small, Stiles can barely hear him over his own heartbeat in his ears. 

 

"I forgot where we came from when I woke up. I've had... Well, I suppose they're memories, but I thought they were just nightmares for the longest time. Little flashes of our lives before we ended up here, usually bloody and unhappy memories. Things I didn't want to remember, but my mind just couldn't let go." He pauses to let out a shuddering breath. "And then I started to remember things when I was awake, little things like how you like curly fries, and what Peter looks like with scars on his face.” 

 

"Oh my god," Stiles breathes. "You _are_ him—you are my Derek."

 

"I swear to god, if I'd remembered sooner I would have said something," promises Derek with another quick glance at Stiles. "I swear I wouldn't have left you to deal with this alone."

 

"When did you know?" 

 

"I... I wasn't sure until today, really."

 

"But you suspected..." Stiles hisses, "And you didn't say anything." 

 

"I had no idea what was happening!" Derek snarls, taking a step forward before remembering that he can't actually get any closer. Stiles is still protected while he remains on top of the tree. "I thought I was going crazy, or having some kind of sick fantasies about you or something."

 

Stiles chokes out a weak laugh. "Oh my god. Of _course_ you did.” 

 

"I didn't fucking know, okay?"

 

"What does this even mean, Derek? How the hell do you—why are you even here?" 

 

The guilt is back again, all over Derek's face and posture. He starts folding in on himself, his shoulders hunching forward like he can curl up into a ball and make the world go away. 

 

Well, too bad. Stiles is ready for some answers already. 

 

"Derek, tell me," he demands. 

 

 

"You were dead." 

 

 

It's the way he says it, that makes Stiles just... Stop. Because there's nothing in his voice for a second before it breaks on that last word. Like he's been swallowing it for weeks now, keeping it hidden from Stiles—and probably himself—for as long as he could. 

 

He just knows that it's been killing Derek this entire time, wondering if it's real or if he’s gone nuts. If Stiles is dead, or alive. 

 

Stiles tries to swallow the dryness out of his mouth, and asks, "What did you do?" 

 

"I tried to get you back. But, by the time I found you out in the preserve, you had already made a deal with the Nogitsune, and... It was... You were gone. It was just that thing in your body, bragging about some stupid mind-chess game you'd played with it or something and I just lost it. I started wailing on it with my claws, threatening to kill it if it didn't bring you back." 

 

"Derek—"

 

"No, don't," he rasps, holding a hand up. "I already know how bad that was. Of _course_ the damn demon wanted to make a deal, and of course I said 'yes'." 

 

"Why did it do this? Why did it make your family come back and my m-mom?" 

 

"To amuse itself. To feed off our emotions,” Derek replies weakly. 

 

Stiles sinks back down onto the stump, and falls silent. There’s so much he wants to say, so much he should probably be doing, but he’s tired. He’s beyond exhausted at this point, barely hanging on a thread, and Derek’s not looking that much better. 

 

Which is probably why he just says it. 

 

“Come with me?” 

 

Derek jerks his head up and blinks at Stiles for a long moment. “Where?” 

 

“To wherever I go when I complete this spell thing.” 

 

“What if you die again?” 

 

Stiles shrugs, “I’ve been there, done that. I figure I might as well give it a go if it means putting an actual end to this thing.”   
  
Derek doesn’t seem amused, but he does bend down to pick the paper up, and approach the tree as much as he can. Stiles holds out a hand, breaking the barrier enough to pull Derek through.

 

“What if we just die, and that thing keeps going after the pack?” Derek asks while he hands the paper over. Stiles smiles at him, bright and warm and probably all wrong for this situation. Whatever. 

 

“Don’t worry, I got it this time,” he assures him. “No more stupid deals, the ball is in our court now.” 

 

Stiles doesn’t even blink when Derek takes his hand, because of course he does. He doesn’t pause or stutter when the man leans forward, gently tugging Stiles’ body closer until their noses brush together, and his whispered words breath across his lips. 

 

“ _You can do this._ ” 

 

Stiles smiles against his lips, letting himself enjoy Derek’s warmth, the slightly-spicy scent of him, the roughness of his stubble against his cheek for a moment. Just a moment. 

 

The paper rustles as he wipes a smear of blood across it, and murmurs the words against Derek’s mouth.

 

This is going to hurt. 

 

 

_Breathe In._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Breath out._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Derek jerks awake, the echo of a name still on his lips. 

 

He remembers… pain, blood, shadows at the edge of his vision, _family_. 

 

Derek closes his eyes again, taking a deep breath and letting that old pain settle back in where it belongs. 

 

When he opens his eyes again, it’s painfully bright, forcing him to squint up at the flecks of green leaves and blue sky above him. Something warm squeezes his hand, and Derek turns to find bright amber eyes staring back at him. 

 

“Hi.”

 

The face in front of him breaks into the most radiant smile Derek has ever seen.

 

“Hi, Sourwolf. Nice to see you again.”

 

 

 

 

 

The end. 

 

 

 

 

                                                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
